


they both end in trouble (lhm timestamp)

by chickenfree



Series: lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, angst? or was i just mad when i wrote it?, celeste pizza for one, farm au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenfree/pseuds/chickenfree
Summary: "It does feel lopsided, like Dan had worried, the two of them looming over this tiny woman."
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543711
Comments: 17
Kudos: 39
Collections: phandomficfests: escape from reality





	they both end in trouble (lhm timestamp)

Dan dithers for ages.

Phil feels like he’s watching Dan wade into an icy stream. He tries to be useful, but he doesn’t know if there’s a rock that’ll slide below the surface, something he can’t see that could drag Dan under despite his best efforts.

\--

“You have two brothers,” she says. 

Phil’s squished into the booth beside Dan. It does feel lopsided, like Dan had worried, the two of them looming over this tiny woman. They haven’t really explained what they are to each other. Dan had just asked one night if he could bring someone, and that was that. Phil doesn’t think he’s what she expected.

Dan tips towards him for a moment, resting his shaking weight against Phil’s arm for a split second before he veers away. He doesn’t say anything. 

“Half brothers,” she corrects. “Adrian’s seventeen, now, and Ben’s fourteen. They’re lovely. They know about you, and they’d like to meet but it’s – you know, it’s up to you.”

Dan manages a flickering smile.

“It’s good to see you,” she continues. Dan’s leaning back into Phil’s space, again, not quite touching but nearly there. “I – thought about you a lot, Daniel.”

“Me, too,” Dan croaks.

She smiles, wary and wet-looking like she’s on the verge of tears.

“How’s your dad?”

Phil pokes experimentally at a mushroom. He can’t think of what might be wrong with it, but he’s worried, he decides.

“I don’t know,” Dan says.

“Oh.”

Dan’s right hand darts out and clamps down just above Phil’s knee. Phil glances up at her, knows instinctively that Dan’s staring at the table and won’t catch her reaction.

She’s staring at Dan with a look that feels so familiar to Phil. They look so alike, like reflections of each other. 

“Have you lived here for long?”

“Four years,” Dan says.

She nods, turning back to her own meal. Phil wonders if she’s thinking that they’ve lived here for four years and Dan hasn’t ever contacted her, probably passed her in the street like a ghost.

“So is it just your dad at the farm now?” she says after a few bites. She sounds like she’s trying to sound casual. Phil thinks he only recognizes it because he’s heard that same tone so many times from Dan; maybe it would slip past anyone else.

“You remember the Johnsons?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad hired their youngest, I guess. He’s – nan said that he said he’d sell it to that one.”

“He’d sell the whole place?” she asks. She’s looking up at Dan again, searching for something. Phil thinks Dan might actually be looking back, now.

Dan shrugs, fake-casual right back. “Not much else to do with it, I suppose.”

“You wouldn’t go back?”

“Not really your business,” Dan says, sharp. “Is it.”

“No,” she says, slowly. 

Dan lets out a breath, drawing the edge of his lower lip between his teeth. He leans into Phil’s space again, vaguely bumping against his shoulder. She glances between the two of them.

“So you’ve been alright?” she says, quietly, when it’s clear that Dan isn’t going to fill the silence.

“Fine,” Dan says, still clipped. He stabs at his salad, pulling out a comically large piece of tomato.

“I really thought it would be better,” she says, carefully. “I thought – you had your dad, and your family, and all that room to run, and the church, and… and your dad had the business, all these – all these plans, Daniel. I couldn’t offer you any of that. I really thought it would be better.”

Dan’s still chomping on his ridiculous fucking tomato. He’s taking his sweet time with it, Phil thinks, none of the caveman anaconda business that he does at home.

He finally finishes with the stupid thing after a minute, carefully settling his fork on the edge of the plate.

“He made me muck out your side of the barn, the day you left,” Dan says. “He wanted me to – like. Prove that I was better than you. That I could be what he needed me to be.”

She’s looking at him even more wide-eyed, lips pressed into a tight line. Phil realizes that it’s probably not going at all how she thought. He didn’t picture it any other way.

Dan’s gone blank and horrible beside him, stiff like a cardboard cut-out of himself.

“I’m really sorry, Daniel,” she says. She sounds like – like a mum, Phil thinks. Like a proper one. Like Phil’s own mum. Like she’s got a lot of practice. He didn’t expect that part; didn’t expect that she could be what she is to Dan and still seem so – correct for the role of being what he needed.

Dan’s hand is gripping Phil’s leg like Phil might get swept away if he lets go.

“It’s Dan, now,” he snaps.

“I’m really sorry, Dan,” she repeats, gentle.

“Whatever.”

He goes back to his meal, shoving a piece of bread into his mouth and blinking his big doe eyes down at Phil for a moment, comically innocent looking as long as he’s silent.

She’s turned her wary look to Phil, when he looks. He hazards a tiny shrug. She looks like she’d bolt if she could, and he’s – he doesn’t know how Dan would take that.

“How have you been?” Dan asks, just when Phil is sure they’re going to finish in icy silence. He’s mumbling, so quiet and rounded over the letters that Phil doesn’t know if she’ll understand.

She falls into an awkward silence for a moment, obviously confused. “I’ve been – alright. I love my – um, your brothers. And the – where I live,” she finally says, carefully. “But it’s been… it’s been hard. I feel like I missed a lot of important things, and it’s – hard not to wonder, I suppose.”

Dan nods, once, picking at an olive.

“You knew it was a shithole,” he says.

She makes a vague sound that Phil recognizes, even though he doesn’t know if it means the same thing. “I thought so. But I thought – I thought that was me, since everyone else loved it so much.”

“It was a shithole,” Dan informs her. “Like, objectively.”

Phil can’t help the squeak of a laugh that escapes. Dan’s propensity for stating his opinion as objective fact always gets to him; it’s so unlike his own meandering.

They both turn to him. He impulsively moves to hide his face, before realizing with a start that his fork is still in his hand, waving wildly. 

Dan’s nose is wrinkled, and there’s a little smile creeping along at the corner of his mouth. 

She’s turned to him, too, with an eerily familiar look.

“It fucking sucked,” Dan says, after a minute.

“I know.”

“I stuck my hand in so many sheep,” he says. “It was so fucking muddy and boring and horrible.”

She’s chewing her lip, silently watching him.

“My dad is a dickhead,” he continues. “I don’t – I don’t get that. I don’t get how you didn’t see that.” 

“Kind of did,” she says. 

Dan grimaces. She mirrors him, scrunching her face up into the same sulky face Dan does. Dan almost laughs, for a moment. Phil has to watch him deflate. 

“You left me,” he says, eventually. “Like, you actually – you actually left me with him. That was – I didn’t decide that.” 

Phil can hear the  _ therapy words _ in there, the way Dan stumbles over them.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. I’m really sorry, again, but – that’s still true.”

“I hated you, for a long time.”

She nods. Phil can’t decide if he really wants to be present in this cafe anymore or if he’s better off floating in space. He looks down and realizes he’s shoved his salad into a smiley face.

“I just think that was – easier, though,” Dan says, beside him. “Something to do, I guess.”

“I understand that,” she says. Phil isn’t going to think too hard about how nice she’s being. They seem to be winding down, but –

“I have a brain injury,” Dan blurts out. “I have a service dog. I just graduated from uni, like, a week ago, so if you wanted an academic kid that’s – that’s not me. I’m just a reformed – uh. Sheep idiot. Also I’m gay and Phil is my partner, and I didn’t want to tell you because it didn’t matter an hour ago, but if you’re going to talk to me again then it will. I haven’t had a mum in a long time and it’s fine if I just don’t have one.”

He takes a breath, finally. He leans into Phil’s side, a familiar weight. Phil’s not sure what the protocol is for – watching your boyfriend come out to his estranged mum. He takes Dan’s right hand in his left, anyways, squeezing it even though their hands are on their thighs below the table and he doesn’t know if it means anything to her.

“Fuck,” Dan mumbles. “That’s everything.”

“That’s a lot,” she says. She catches Phil’s gaze instead, smiling softly. “You’re good to him, right?”

He startles, if he’s honest.

“He’s good,” Dan butts in instead, when Phil is too lost for words. “He’s really good.”

“That’s my only question, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to Daye for betaing, and for adopting this universe so whole-heartedly from the start. <3
> 
> Come find me (please don't) at [@chickenfreeblog](chickenfreeblog.tumblr.com), where we're just being feral and trying to remember who Dan and Phil are.


End file.
